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Things will get real for the Auckland A-League franchise on Thursday, with the unveiling of the name and the playing kit.
While the team were officially launched back in November - with all kinds of promises, hope and hyperbole - the first chapter will begin now, with a name, an emblem and a uniform, a little over six months from their first match.
The name has been the subject of much intrigue and speculation, as it always is for new sporting franchises. The Herald has been told that up to six options have been discussed by the club’s powerbrokers, after an initial brainstorming exercise yielded numerous possibilities.
Owner Bill Foley has been open with his fondness for the Black Knights name. At the time of the team’s launch, the American billionaire told the Herald that it was a “great name” and a “perfect” option. In another Herald interview earlier this month, he reiterated his preference for that moniker, based on the West Point military teams of which he is a graduate.
Bill Foley. Photo / Photosport
“I’m an army guy who went to West Point, and they [West Point sports teams] are the Black Knights, if that gives you a hint,” said Foley.
The club has commissioned market research about that name, which generated varying feedback, but it’s believed the negative outweighed the positive. There is also the unavoidable link with the New Zealand Knights, Auckland’s previous A League venture which folded in 2007 after two seasons, though both Foley and chief executive Nick Becker have said previously they are unconcerned about that, given the brief period that the club was in the marketplace and the time that has elapsed since then.
The AFC prefix (Association Football Club) would offer a link to the English Premier Club AFC Bournemouth, which is the jewel in Foley’s ever-increasing football stable.
Settling on a name is always a tricky business, though eventually most become enshrined.
Photo / Photosport
When Auckland’s entry was approved for rugby league’s Winfield Cup in the early 1990s, the sponsors of the new franchise (DB Bitter) launched a public competition - called “Break out the name game” - which generated thousands of entries. The final four were the Warriors, the Volcanoes, the Lions and the Bombers, with the Warriors receiving three times as many votes as the other options.
When Terry Serepisos took over the A-League licence in 2007 to launch a team in the capital, a local newspaper asked readers for suggestions, which flooded in. From that survey the popular choices were the Wanderers and Cosmos, along with traditional names like Wellington AFC, FC Wellington and Wellington City FC. Club bosses eventually settled on the Phoenix, which has proved popular and unique.
The launch of netball’s ANZ Championship in 2008 threw up some interesting names, including the Central Pulse and Canterbury Tactix, which weren’t initially liked but have become established.
Former Wellington Phoenix owner Terry Serepisos. Photo / Greg Bowker
The prospective kit will also provoke debate, as they always do. The two previous Auckland A-League ventures (the Knights and the Football Kingz) both used black as their base colour, though blue tends to be a preference for most teams from the region, from the Warriors to the Blues, the Northern Mystics and Auckland City FC.
The launch will be held at the Chamberlain Pub in downtown Auckland, one of Foley’s operations in his large hospitality empire throughout New Zealand.
It will bring back some memories of the Phoenix unveiling, staged in Serepisos’s palatial offices on the 12th floor of a central city building. Though the flamboyant Serepisos didn’t last, the Phoenix have and are now thriving, after some difficult years, with an academy that is the envy of the A-League, a men’s team that is equal top and the women’s team showing potential.
That needs to be the aim for Auckland, as they strive to put football back in the spotlight in New Zealand’s biggest city.
Michael Burgess has been a sports journalist since 2005, winning several national awards and covering Olympics, Fifa World Cups and America’s Cup campaigns. A football aficionado, Burgess will never forget the noise that greeted Rory Fallon’s goal against Bahrain in Wellington in 2009.
